New Social Media Connections Could Equal New Opportunities

Susan Bardack is chief marketing officer for iZoca.com, a social networking website for individuals, groups and organizations. iZoca provides tools to help groups connect and share information privately, while also helping them to spread their message publicly.

I’m the sort of person who thrives on multi-tasking and loves to juggle my way through life. The fact that I always have many projects and events going on makes my world go round.

Of course now, social media has given us even more to juggle and it sometimes seems a bit too much.

In addition to my position at iZoca.com, I am also a partner for a company where I do social media and overall communications consulting.

Right now, I am pulling together an event in the Albany, NY area called “Failing My Way to Success” for a client who has a captivating life story to share. Our client’s name is Steve Lobel and we are utilizing both social and traditional media to promote him and make the event fly.

Mr. Lobel has more than a unique life story, he has hundreds and hundreds of contacts and personal connections. We all know someone like Mr. Lobel, the kind of guy who knows everyone and anyone and can help connect us to someone at a moment’s notice.

Untapped Goldmine

When we started working for him, we took a little trip to his computer and discovered an untapped gold mine. It was an excel spreadsheet overflowing with names and email addresses for nearly one-thousand contacts. We then took a little jaunt over to his LinkedIn account and realized that he wasn’t connected to nearly any of these people. Cue social media 911!

So, we went to work; easily taking the names from excel and transferring them to LinkedIn. As you can only imagine, a beautiful thing happened. Person after person started accepting Mr. Lobel’s request to connect and there was now new potential and opportunity.

Meaningful Content

It sounds like such a simple thing; find your connections and transfer them to your social networks. Of course the next important task is to continually create meaningful content for all the people who will be viewing your status. Keeping folks captivated with links to articles, interesting business tips and what’s working for you are all important concepts to think about which will in turn help you succeed.

For our client, we will begin reaching out to the hundreds of people Mr. Lobel is now connected with to promote his unique brand and the special events that he will be hosting. This new communications channel will be leveraged along with the traditional media channels I have blogged about in the past to get the word out.

Tap Into That Dusty Old Rolodex

So don’t let me hold you back. Go through your excel sheets, go to your business cards, even that dusty old rolodex and make it happen. Find these folks on your social networks and even go beyond the walls of your community to explore possibilities that could lead to new found success.